BlackBerry Messenger to shut down next month

Dynamic District

April 19, 2019

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The once-popular BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, will permanently shut down on May 31, 2019, due to lack of sufficient users.

This announcement has been made by Emtek Group, an Indonesia-based company which acquired the BBM license in 2016. It’s worth noting that the original licensing deal was for 6 years, but the service is being discontinued just half way through.

BBM and all its internal services such as purchased stickers, BBMoji, Rewards & Value points and user’s chat data (photos, videos, and files) will disappear after the aforementioned date.

As an alternative, BlackBerry is bringing BBM Enterprise (BBMe) to individual users. Earlier, BBMe was limited just to the company’s enterprise customers. The app is already live on Play Store and it’s expected to launch soon on the Apple App Store as well.

BBMe offers enterprise-grade end-to-end encryption. It will be free for the first year following which users will have to pay $2.49 for a 6-month subscription.